Codalus IDE user guide

Codalus IDE is a free, open-source (MIT) IDE for .NET on Windows, macOS and Linux.

1. Installing and first start
2. Solutions and projects: the Properties window, Show All Files, items and templates, opening a folder, external tools
3. NuGet packages and .NET tools
4. Editing and navigating code
5. Building and running
6. Debugging
7. Web development: HTML, CSS and JavaScript, Hot Reload, Razor and Blazor, endpoints, .http files, certificates and secrets
8. Data: Entity Framework Core, the Database Explorer, table data, queries and SQL projects
9. Testing
10. Git
11. Terminal and C# Interactive
12. The window, settings, themes and keyboard shortcuts
13. Troubleshooting, logs and crash reports
14. Older .NET versions: .NET Core 2.0 to .NET 10, and older SDKs in global.json
15. Containers, Aspire and publishing
16. Profiling and diagnostics: the Performance Profiler, Diagnostic Tools and .NET Counters
17. Keyboard shortcuts on each operating system: completion keys, and the shortcuts Windows, Linux and macOS keep
18. Avalonia: XAML editing, the XAML Previewer, the Live Visual Tree and Live Property Explorer, new Avalonia projects
19. Remote development: SSH, WSL, containers and Dev Containers
20. AI assistance: AI Chat with the provider you choose, inline and next edit suggestions, AI actions, agent mode, MCP, external agents over ACP, and what is never sent
21. .NET MAUI: devices, emulators and simulators, running and debugging on Android and iOS, the workloads and the Android SDK, MAUI XAML
22. Visual Basic: editing, mixed C# and VB solutions, what the editor adds as you type, project options, tests and debugging
23. F#: editing with FsAutoComplete and Fantomas, the compile order, F# Interactive, scripts, type providers, analyzers, Expecto tests and debugging
24. WCF: Add Service Reference with dotnet-svcutil, CoreWCF services, the WCF Test Client, and system.serviceModel in configuration files
25. WPF, Windows Forms and WinUI 3: opening and building them on every OS, running, debugging and testing on Windows, WPF and WinUI XAML editing, packaged apps, new projects and items
26. .NET Framework: SDK-style and non-SDK-style projects on every OS, packages.config, the reference assemblies, Convert to SDK-style, running, debugging and tests on Windows
27. Plugin API reference: every type and member of the plugin API

Writing plugins is covered in plugins.md, with the API reference.

Keyboard shortcuts at a glance

Ctrl means Cmd on macOS, except where keyboard.md says (completion is the Control key, ⌃Space). These are the default keyboard scheme's; the VS Code scheme differs where settings.md says. Every command is also in the search box (Ctrl+Q) and the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P), and every shortcut can be changed (Tools → Open Keyboard Shortcuts). A few shortcuts differ on Linux and macOS, where the OS keeps the classic one (keyboard.md).